dicerollerdnd Sign In

The Code

Field Manual for Tabletop Command

The Code

You are a warrior. The table is our unit. The session is the mission.

Measure a man by self-command, not by volume; by restraint under pressure; by keeping his word when it costs.

Aim

Tempo, clarity, dignity.

Bearing

Speak your character, act not react, finish what you start.

Conduct

  • Strength: we control only ourselves; don't make others carry your weight.
  • Control: start on time; one voice at a time; stay on task; close loops.
  • Courage: take hard choices without noise; own your errors fast.
  • Honor: protect the unit; no ambush PvP; intimacy stays offscreen.
  • Respect: critique the move, never the man; no humiliation shots.
  • Accountability: if you break pace, you repair it—quietly and fully.

Standard

Clear tempo, clean handovers, risks owned, consequences accepted, everyone leaves standing.

Creed

Read the room. Carry the weight. Leave no one behind.

Contents

Front Matter

Part I — Ground (Aim, Bearing, Standard)

Part II — Strength (Self-Command)

Part III — Control (Discipline)

Part IV — Courage (Choice Under Cost)

Part V — Honor (Guard the Unit)

Part VI — Respect (Hard Edge, Clean Hands)

Part VII — Accountability (Repair & Standard)

Part VIII — Aggression as Craft

Part IX — Ruthlessness, Redeemed

Part X — Service (Power for Others)

Part XI — Command & Handovers (Calm Ops)

Part XII — Fieldcraft (Modes)

Part XIII — Edge Cases (Men & Moments)

Part XIV — The Long Arc

Play Like a Roman Emperor — Field Notes for the Table

Why we're here

To practice command without noise. A session is a controlled arena for the old virtues—prudence (clear judgment), justice (fair dealing), fortitude (endure and press), temperance (self-command). We run missions in fiction so we run life cleaner outside.

Doctrine (short, hard, useful)

  • Clarity before speed. Say the objective in one line. Name the pressure. Name the window. Then move.
  • Cost makes meaning. If nothing is at stake, nothing sticks. Set a real trade-off and accept it.
  • Witness matters. A scene is epic when men see the choice, see the price, and see the world change.
  • Return fire with discipline. Control yourself first; correct the situation next; talk last.

Models that hold under pressure

Augustus (27 BCE – 14 CE) — Order from chaos

Data: Consolidated power after civil war; built roads, rules, offices; punished arbitrary cruelty.

Table translation: Define ROE and objective first. Standardize handovers. Reduce "surprise" moves on allies. Your stability is everyone's speed.

Trajan (98 – 117) — Service that scales

Data: Widely respected; answered governors case-by-case; expanded, then invested.

Table translation: Read the men, not your ego. Place key decisions with those best positioned to carry them. Reward clean work with more responsibility.

Hadrian (117 – 138) — Draw the right line; hold it

Data: Ended overextension; fortified borders; inspected the legions in person.

Table translation: Know when to stop advancing. Call the rest, fix the hinge, tighten logistics. Discipline is a tempo choice, not a vibe.

Antoninus Pius (138 – 161) — Quiet excellence

Data: Long, uneventful prosperity; fair law; maintenance over spectacle.

Table translation: Start on time, end on time, no humiliation shots. The boring habits win campaigns.

Marcus Aurelius (161 – 180) — Self-command under siege

Data: Wrote Meditations during war and plague; held the center without screaming.

Table translation: When heat rises, lower your voice. Decide once. Own errors fast. The room copies your nervous system.

Aurelian (270 – 275) — Restoration, not theater

Data: Reunified a fractured empire; "Restorer of the World."

Table translation: When the table is frayed, repair trust first: reset clocks, remove rot, re-state the standard. Restoration is harder than conquest; do it anyway.

What makes a scene epic (spec, not poetry)

  • Clarity: The choice is sharp (A or B), visible, and owned.
    Example: "Ford now with losses" vs "Hold the fort and face siege." No third door smuggled in.
  • Cost: A payment that can't be un-paid (oath, wound, burned bridge, mercy that stings).
  • Witness: Men present to see it; memory shared; silence earned.
  • Return: The world answers—river floods, banners appear, an ally bends the knee, a door truly closes.

If any of the four is missing, it's noise, not epic.

How to run this tonight (checklist)

  1. Objective (1 line): "Extract the ledger before the flood."
  2. Pressure (6 boxes) and Window (4 boxes): put them where eyes land.
  3. ROE (3 bullets): no ambush PvP; intimacy offscreen; critique the move, not the man.
  4. Tempo words only: HOLD. CUT. RESET-2. ADVANCE. REPEAT. SLOW.
  5. One voice at a time: marker → eye contact → pass.
  6. AAR-30: Good / Drag / Adjust. Log it. Bring the adjustment next time without speech.

Metrics (because standards need numbers)

  • Start discipline: ≥ 95% on-time start.
  • End discipline: ± 5 minutes of stated end.
  • Turn economy: average ≤ 45 seconds per player on standard turns.
  • Relitigation count: 0 re-opened decisions per session.
  • Repair rate: 100% of identified drags see a concrete adjustment next session.
  • Aftercare: room left better than found—every time.

Track it in a column. If we miss, we repair. Quietly. Fully.

Why we do this (answer it plain)

  • To carry weight on purpose. Life throws cost at random; the table sets cost on purpose. That builds muscle you can use.
  • To practice justice without theater. Fair turns, clean handovers, no humiliation—habits that travel.
  • To convert aggression into craft. Force becomes lines that hold, not spills that hurt.
  • To remember we are not alone. Brotherhood without fuzz: men who can be relied on because the pattern proves it.

You don't need a banner. You need a standard. Hold it like Augustus—order first. Decide like Trajan—service forward. Stop like Hadrian—hold the right ground. Maintain like Antoninus—no drama. Endure like Marcus—self first, then world. Restore like Aurelian—stitch what's torn.

That's why we're here. To leave the room—and the men in it—standing.

Augustus at the Turning

Setting: Senate House (Curia Julia), January 27 BCE. Rome is tired of civil war. Forty years of blood since Sulla; twenty since Caesar crossed the Rubicon; just two since Actium. Twenty-eight legions look to one man for pay and purpose. Grain from Egypt flows through his hand. Old families want dignity back. The streets want bread and quiet.

He stands at the threshold and notices what steady men notice: the cool seam where marble meets bronze; the scrape of sandals; cedar on senators' togas; the thin scratch of stylus on wax as a clerk checks the roll. He counts without moving his lips—how many allies, how many wary, how many waiting to see which way the dust falls.

"Princeps senatus," an usher murmurs—the honor is old, the power new. He has not yet taken the name "Augustus." Today decides if Rome names him at all.

Agrippa leans close, voice low. "You can return it all," he says, "and keep the provinces that need soldiers." (Data: In the First Settlement of 27 BCE, Octavian theatrically "returned" extraordinary powers; the Senate then asked him to govern the provinces with legions—Hispania, Gaul, Syria, and Egypt—granting him imperium proconsulare for ten years. He received the honorific Augustus.)

Maecenas, on the other side, speaks without looking at him. "If you must hold the knife," he says, "wrap it in law."

He steps forward. The lictors remain outside; fasces idle. He doesn't need the axes to make the point.

A senator from an older house rises—the kind whose grandfathers wore victory paint. "Young man," he says, "Rome is a republic. Will you make her so again?"

Obligations above him: to mos maiorum—the way of the ancestors; to Jupiter, whose oaths bind harder than iron; to the memory of a murdered father-by-adoption who put "dictator for life" on the wrong side of a coin. Obligations below him: legions that have followed him through famine and pay delays; veterans who expect land; cities abroad that fear another governor who steals their sons and stores; a market that collapses if the grain ships idle. He carries both weights in one spine.

He answers like a carpenter setting a beam: one line, then the next.

"The res publica," he says, "returns to the Senate and the People." His voice is level. No theater. He lays the bundle of extraordinary commands on the figurative table. Silence holds. The men feel the air change; power does not scream when it is real.

The chamber does what Rome does when it fears vacuum: it fills it with form.

Decision in one line: Return the republic's language; keep the instruments that prevent another civil war; bind force to law and law to habit.

That is how you play like Augustus. Not by grabbing more, but by cutting to shape—obligation above, obligation below, one steady standard through the middle. The scene is epic not because the room cheered (it didn't), but because clarity, cost, witness, and return all stood in the same hour: a clean offer, a real trade, men who saw it, and a world that changed and stayed changed.

The Quiet Man

He arrives ten minutes early and counts chairs without thinking about it. Wipes a ring of water from the table. Checks the spare pencils. Straightens the map tube so it won't roll. He sets a mug near the quiet seat, the one by the wall. He keeps exact change for the pizza man. He folds the receipt into the lid of the box so no one has to ask. He tests the lamp, taps the bulb once, and leaves it.

He does small things the way some men lift—steady reps, no noise. Dice into a shallow bowl. Cards squared. Rulebook open to the page with the crease. He writes names on slips of card in a hand that doesn't wobble. He checks the clock on the oven and the one on his wrist. He sets both five minutes fast and forgets he did it.

He does the shopping that no one sees. Tape. Spare sleeves. Napkins. A pen that works. The sort of logistics that keep a room from fraying. He cleans the coffee plunger with hot water, not soap, because it tastes cleaner that way. He leaves the kitchen better than he found it. He has done this before.

When the men come in, he is there. He says their names. He does not rush to fill the air. He notes who left a day heavy and who keeps a laugh too loud for the room. He folds it all into a simple plan: slow start, firm middle, cut clean at the end.

He calls time the way a carpenter checks level. Quietly. He lets a joke land, then moves the work forward. One voice at a time. He takes his turn when it is his and ends it on a line that makes the next man strong. No dogpiles. No tug-of-war. He watches for the man who sits back one inch too far and gives him the first question that matters. He notices the shoulders come forward a fraction. That is enough.

When tempers rise, he does not. He says three words that set the frame and waits. He is ready to be the one who is wrong so the rest do not have to be right. He will own the error if it keeps the room intact. He has nothing to prove and a unit to keep.

He does not talk about safety. He builds it into the timing. He will end a scene one beat early, not one beat late. He will say "cut" once all night and make it feel like a turn, not a slap. He will take the heat from a hard choice and move the consequence into the fiction where it belongs. He knows the difference between a man and a move.

He works a job that takes hands. The nails tell you that. There is a line on his forearm from the time he forgot that steel remembers sun. He drives home in a truck that rattles at fifty-five and settles at sixty. He cracks when the weather turns dry and heals when the rain comes back. He has a list on his phone that reads like a grocery: Wednesday oil, Friday invoice, Saturday fix the hinge. He keeps tools clean. He keeps promises the same way.

He has stood at a graveside and not made a speech. He has paid a bill he did not owe because someone had to. He has been loud in bad ways and learned to be quiet in good ones. He did not like every lesson. He kept them anyway.

At the table he takes the hard door without noise. He stands between nonsense and the men who came to work. He says no to clever detours. He says yes to the thing that costs and pays for it. He will be the one who is late to bed and early to sweep if that is what keeps the mission clean.

He does not chase glory. He does the room he is in. One corridor at a time. When others argue about yesterday, he lays out the map for today. When a man is sharp from a week that cut him, he lets the edge bite the paper instead of the skin. When a man falls behind, he slows the tempo a fraction and makes the next prompt a step, not a leap. It looks like nothing. It is the work.

His name is not on a banner. He does not stream. Men know him by what the room feels like when he is in it. They know the silence he holds and the edges he keeps. They know the way work gets done without ceremony. They know that games finish with dignity and that no one bleeds to prove they are brave.

Who is he. The man who keeps the Code. Sometimes the one behind the screen. Sometimes the fighter with the dented shield. Sometimes the one who brings the chairs and leaves last. Most days he is any of us when we do the work. Some nights he is all of us, for a few hours, when the table holds and the mission runs, and the unit walks out together into the cold air, steady, quiet, unbroken.